The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane | Page 5

courtesy until his accession to the peerage in 1831--was intended by his father for the army, in which he received a captain's commission. But his own predilections were in favour of a seaman's life, and accordingly, after brief schooling, he joined the Hind, as a midshipman, in June, 1793, when he was nearly eighteen years of age.
During the next seven years he learnt his craft in various ships and seas, being helped in many ways by his uncle, the Hon. Alexander Cochrane, but profiting most by his own ready wit and hearty love of his profession. Having been promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1794, he was made commander of the Speedy early in 1800. This little sloop, not larger than a coasting brig, but crowded with eighty-four men and six officers, seemed to be intended only for playing at war. Her whole armament consisted of fourteen 4-pounders. When her new commander tried to add to these a couple of 12-pounders, the deck proved too small and the timbers too weak for them, and they had to be returned. So Lilliputian was his cabin, that, to shave himself, Lord Cochrane was obliged to thrust his head out of the skylight and make a dressing-table of the quarter-deck.
Yet the Speedy, ably commanded, was quite large enough to be of good service. Cruising in her along the Spanish coast, Lord Cochrane succeeded in capturing many gunboats and merchantmen, and the enemy soon learnt to regard her with especial dread. On one memorable occasion, the 6th of May, 1801, he fell in with the Gamo, a Spanish frigate furnished with six times as many men as were in the Speedy and with seven times her weight of shot. Lord Cochrane, boldly advancing, locked his little craft in the enemy's rigging. It was, in miniature, a contest as unequal as that by which Sir Francis Drake and his fellows overcame the Great Armada of Spain in 1588, and with like result. The heavy shot of the Gamo riddled the _Speedy's_ sails, but, passing overhead, did no mischief to her hulk or her men. During an hour there was desperate fighting with small arms, and twice the Spaniards tried in vain to board their sturdy little foe. Lord Cochrane then determined to meet them on their own deck, and the daring project was facilitated by one of the smart expedients in which he was never wanting. Before going into action, "knowing," as he said, "that the final struggle would be a desperate one, and calculating on the superstitious wonder which forms an element in the Spanish character," he had ordered his crew to blacken their faces; and, "what with this and the excitement of combat, more ferocious-looking objects could scarcely be imagined." With these men following him he promptly gained the frigate's deck, and then their strong arms and hideous faces soon frightened the Spaniards into submission.
The senior officer of the Gamo asked for a certificate of his bravery, and received one testifying that he had conducted himself "like a true Spaniard." To Spain, of course, this was no sarcasm, and on the strength of the document its holder soon obtained further promotion.
That achievement, which cost only three men's lives, led to consequences greater than could have been expected. Lord Cochrane, after three months' waiting, received the rank of post captain. But his desire that the services of Lieutenant Parker, his second in command, should also be recompensed led to a correspondence with Earl St. Vincent which turned him from a jealous superior into a bitter enemy. In reply to Lord Cochrane's recommendation, Earl St. Vincent alleged that "it was unusual to promote two officers for such a service,--besides which the small number of men killed on board the Speedy did not warrant the application." Lord Cochrane answered, with incautious honesty, that "his lordship's reasons for not promoting Lieutenant Parker, because there were only three men killed on board the Speedy, were in opposition to his lordship's own promotion to an earldom, as well as that of his flag-captain to knighthood, and his other officers to increased rank and honours; for that, in the battle from which his lordship derived his title there was only one man killed on board his own flagship." That was language too plain to be forgiven.
In July, 1801, the Speedy was captured by three French line-of-battle ships, whose senior in command, Captain Palli��re, declined to accept the sword of an officer "who had," as he said, "for so many hours struggled against impossibility," and asked Lord Cochrane, though a prisoner, still to wear it. He, however, was refused employment as commander of another ship. Thereupon, with characteristic energy, he devoted his forced leisure from professional pursuits to a year of student life at Edinburgh, where, in 1802, Lord Palmerston